Bushcraft Foraging: Tapping Birch Water

Description

In this video we look at the trunk tapping method of collecting sap from a Birch tree. It can be damaging so if using this method its best to drill a very 'small shallow hole.

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Video Transcription

hi there guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here and I'm out in the woods today and it's a really beautiful day to be out here you can see in my part of the world that spring is well within motion and you know the seasons are really turning and this time of year we're in the first two weeks of March as I record this it's a very good time to be going out and tapping silver birch if you want to go out and tap silver birch and drink SAP or make something out of the SAP and really you've got about a 2 to 4 week window to go out with in March to do it sometimes it may run over either side but it really depends on how the weather's going how the seasons are a kind of behaving and I'm on a small vantage point here and you can see down into this ravine behind me we've got lots of white branches and in hilly woodlands like this it's nice to use these hills to actually get a glimpse of the canopies if you can and although I'm still well below it it just means I can see all the white branches behind me and I know there's some big silver birch trees there and they're sucking up all that sat at this time of year at one last effort to get everything fueled for the spring so let's go and tap some birch

so I didn't even make it halfway down and I found this big tree here we've actually got four trunks growing out of one root structure which is quite unusual but given the good exposure and the lack of competition they all look pretty healthy I've spotted a bit of polypore at the top which is always good to keep your eyes peeled for if you're walking along you see a birch tree and you look up and it's covered in poly pores you know the trees pretty much dead and you're not going to be tapping that one and you can always turn to taking bark from it for tinder instead because you're not going to be hurting the trees it's already dead but this tree here looks pretty healthy I think we'll go for this one we've got some really thick armored bark at the base we're not going to be drilling into that I'm going to go for the thinnest stuff here and we won't need to drill in so far but we're going to have to prepare some gear first in this leather bag here I have a variety of items they're going to help us out with tapping the tree this is where I keep all my maintenance gear and various other miscellaneous tools I've got a bandana that's going to help us out a bit later although might have something a little better than that got a drill very good for construction projects and obviously quite useful for tapping into the tree and boring a hole over bone straw this is quite good for concentrating air into a tinder bundle if you're having trouble but also quite useful as a tap to put in the hole and we have some cordage there - and this is jute twine which is very useful as a nest material and cordage it goes without saying how useful cordage is this is going to be great for securing the bottle against the tree because as it fills up it'll pick up weight and you want to kind of make sure it's in place and not on the floor in the morning so other than those basic bits of gear there we're going to need a container you can use anything from a plastic bottle to a stainless steel container like me this is my main water bottle what I use to sterilize water on the fire and this would be perfect but we take the little we're going to need to attach some cord to it first you can see that my container kits when my cooking kit comes in this mash bag and this is going to act as like a fly net for our SAP because if we leave this open while the saps dripping in insects will get in but this will just stop them and it'll actually allow the drops to pass through a little bit easier another thing you can do is put a thin layer of material over the top and tie that with some string we're going to need to tie the bottle to the tree anyway because as it gets heavy it'll start to fall but you really want to kind of weigh that down with a pebble or a ball bearing or something that you have on you and that way the drips will kind of stay there and you won't lose so much SAP around the edge of the cloth it start to absorb everything and it just becomes saturated in the end so the mesh just like this a nylon mesh it's actually quite a versatile bit again but we're going to tie some cordage around now a lot of these steel bottles or cooking or camping vessels have lips that's really all I'm tying this cordage onto is the lip of the bottle just like that just the classic granny knot that can be strapped to the tree then so I can't go to higher because of the tripod won't be climbing up a bit higher than this but you won't be able to see it so I'll settle for this patch here we've got a way to go so I actually get to the sapwood but we'll start drilling in and we'll see how this goes go go for this part just here so it may appear that we're going in very far we're really just getting through this armor here once thick brain bark starts coming out when there will be in the cambium layer and we want to go a bit further through that so the white SAP wood starts coming out you can see now that the SAP is running really flowing out there so we'll get a plug in there nice and quick it will float quickly at first and or will slow down but it'll still be consistent you don't want to hammer the plug all the way in either or else you'll plug the hole that you can see now the SAP is dripping out of laughs we can just put our cord there like this

there should be it you'll see it drifting out

so this has been drifting now for about an hour and a half maybe two hours I haven't quite captrick of it and we've got quite a bit in there and it's still coming out pretty ferociously I expected it to slow down a bit more than that but it seems to be sped up a little bit of heat there or perhaps I've aggravated it slightly causing it to come out a bit more but I think it's time to have a drink

so I containers got quite a bit of birch water in I'm still collecting some more from the tree as we speak but this will be the first time I've tried this since last year and it really is the taste of spring if you've never tried it you should it's so refreshing it's not particularly sweet any very mildly but it's just a really refreshing drink that's amazing

taste so good really is quite a unique taste why

so I'm just making a plug out of a piece of birch I always try and plug the tree with itself in a respect rather than a piece of foreign wood that should be fine so we'll just get this down it's still quite a bit more in there pop that out

we'll put the plug in we go and we'll just cut the end of that off and flush it off I always put a little bit beeswax there just to stop any insects getting red

so you can see there we haven't got much leakage at all if any which is brilliant we'll just press that in there help the tree as much as possible just seal that in stop any infection you should be good so I hope this video helped out guys it's just a very low-profile way of tapping a birch tree and there are many methods out there and you can have a bit of a research into it and pick the method or try the method that you like the best and it really depends on how much you want if you're doing it my way then you're going to needed lots more bits of equipment if you want larger amounts and different bottles and such but I only really ever drink it when I'm out camping at this time of year and I just want a refreshing drink in the morning or in the evening or just throughout the day and I can sort of run a tap and just have a container there to collect some birch sap and it's a nice much nicer than water far more nutritious some incredible health aspects that are attached to birch water you know an anti carcinogen with some very rich nutritional content but all of that you can have a look at online if you're interested if you are interested any of the equipment I'm wearing as well or have used in this video please have a look at the links below there are Amazon links in the description and there are also social media links as well so thanks again for watching guys I really appreciate you commenting and watching the videos and hopefully I'll see you again very soon in another one take care you